There were great ships carrying wine and brandy to the West Indies, where the people were all black, and the most wonderful plants grew, and the palm trees.

And to Canada and Newfoundland, where the great icebergs came down through the mist.

And some carrying fish to the Mediterranean, whose shores were all alive with wonders, to say nothing of the chances of seeing some fighting on the way, for England was at war with France and Spain, and rumours of mighty doings reached us at times.

And some taking tea and tobacco to Hamburg and Emden, where the people were all uncouth foreigners who spoke neither French nor English and so must offer mighty change from Sercq.
Then there were multitudes of smaller vessels, sloops and chasse-marees, bound on shorter and still more profitable, if more dangerous voyages.
Wherever they were going, on whatsoever errand bent, it was into the great outside world, and they all cried, "Come!" Those shorter flights to the nearer shores had a special appeal of their own, and the stories one heard among one's fellows--of the wild midnight runs into Cornish creeks and Devon and Dorset coves, of encounters now and again with the revenue men, of exhilarating flights and narrow escapes from Government cutters--these but added zest to the traffic in one's imagination which, in actual fact, might possibly have been found wanting.
The moral aspects of the free-trade business did not trouble me in the slightest in those days.

It was the old-established and natural trade of the Islands, for which they had evidently been set just where they were with that special end in view.